Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Another two points closer to fourth place! w00t!The Lincoln Stars earned their fourth win in a row against the Tri-City Storm tonight with an impressive 4-1 road victory at the Vaiero Event Center in Kearney. Click here to view the Pointstreak boxscore. With the win, the Stars improved to 26-20-5 (57 points), and are in fifth place in the USHL Western Conference. Lincoln is now five points behind two teams (Sioux Falls, Fargo) who are tied for fourth place with 62 points. Teemu Tiitinen got the Stars on the scoreboard early in this game when he scored his sixth goal of the season at the 1:47 mark of the first period to give Lincoln the 1-0 lead. Forwards Austin Hervey and Rasmus Juell collected the assists on Tiitinen's goal. Teemu's goal would turn out to be the only goal scored in the first twenty minutes despite the Storm out-shooting the Stars 10-4.The Stars came out much stronger in the second period and they were rewarded when forward Ryan Dzingel scored at the 7:17 mark to give Lincoln the 2-0 lead. Jared Hanson and John McCarron earned the assists on Dzingel's 20th goal of the season. McCarron has now scored at least one point in each of the last seven games. The Stars have shown as of late that they can be a very dangerous team while shorthanded, and defenseman Chris Casto proved that once again when he scored his fifth goal of the season, his first shorthanded, at the 9:32 mark of the second period to give Lincoln a commanding 3-0 lead. Assisting on Casto's shorthanded goal was Teemu Tiitinen and Ryan Dzingel. Stars out-shot the Storm 15-8 in the second period.Just when it looked like the Stars would keep their shutout streak against the Storm alive, Tri-City forward Cole Gunner scored at the 15:58 mark of the third period to snap the streak and finally get the Storm on the scoreboard. Gunner's goal was the first TC goal against the Stars since 10/22/10. Going back to that Storm-Stars game on 10/22/10, the Stars held the Storm scoreless for 256 minutes and 5 seconds. Goaltender Kevin Murdock was responsible for all but 20 minutes of that shutout streak, as Lukas Hafner played twenty minutes (the third period) of the game on 10/22/10. Getting back to this game, Stars forward Andrew Schmit scored an empty-net goal with a little more than one minute remaining to complete the scoring. Eric Scheid collected the lone assist on Schmit's ninth goal of the season. Stars win 4-1. Shots were even at 8-8 in the third period. Stars out-shot the Storm overall 27-26.Another big win tonight over a game Tri-City squad. The Stars play the Storm two more times this season, so let's hope they can continue their winning streak in those two remaining games. In the last four wins over the Storm, the Stars have outscored the Storm 18-1. With Brent Tate (injury), Dominik Shine (injury), and Garrett Peterson (league-sanctioned one game suspension) all out of the lineup, it was nice to see the players step up and get the job done tonight. The train rolls on.Stars are back in action this weekend with two HUGE games at the IceBox. Omaha Lancers on Friday night, and the Des Moines Buccaneers on Saturday night. I'll highlight those games with a preview article on Thursday. If you haven't bought your tickets for any of those two games, call Micki at the ticket office and buy them now! Don't be left out.Go Stars.

5 comments:

Great effort last night to rally and play a good smart game. Too bad the shuoutout streak had to end, but more important to get the win. Hopefully for the two big games this weekend Dom will be back. Go Stars!!

Not a bad bit of video :). Nice to see all the goals from the game and not just the home team. Looking at the box score, the attendance was listed at 1,331. That might have been a little generous from looking at the video.

Unfortunately, I will not be able to make it to either game this weekend, as I am getting married this coming Saturday, and our rehearsal dinner is Friday night...Hopefully the boys keep it up, and bring home another 4 points this weekend...